Reply #34: Another kick for what an incredible thread this has been. Thanks for starting it. [View All]

[Fly by night]

I've enjoyed all of it. Hope there's more to come. After all, ...

a month is more than a minute.

FBN

(Here's a poem I wrote shortly after attending my 40th high school reunion in Columbus, Mississippi. I graduated in 1967 in the last completely white graduating class from that north Mississippi school, in a small town on the Tombigbee river where Tennessee Williams and me were born. Neither one of us can say anything in less than 3,000 words.)

Enjoy.

-------

Looking Back -- What Really Mattered

Four decades ago and a few seconds more
we left behind our child-like past
we passed together through a common door
to find our futures, at long last.

Though it seemed, so long ago,
that we were different, one from another
we really were much closer,
in our high schoolish laughter
so much whiter, so much straighter,
so much cleaner (though hardly more sober)
than the many others, the ones who
would follow here, forever after.

When, at last, we left the heat
of that loud and musty gym,
clothed in gown and mortarboard,
maroon and white,
into that steamy night
we could not know, could not portend
(did not even comprehend)
that there would be
as many roads, as many trails,
many foot-paths, many futures
leading us away from here
as there were those of us
back then to take them.

We smiled within ourselves and with each other
at our families in the bleachers
at our coaches, at our teachers
Thinking we had arrived, not that we had just started
on the journeys that have now wrapped around
and brought us back here once again,
though older, wiser, fewer now for those departed
from our midst (into the mist)
that we still cannot comprehend.

We look at each other now and try to guess
what bright young thing once filled the dress
of that now laughing gray-haired matron
we try to see beyond the wrinkles
of that bald, still solid patron
who years ago lined up beside us
on the line in that magnolia-scented bowl
were we ever really teammates –
tell me, how did we become this old?

The answer to that question’s easy, though not simple.
We took those first few furtive footsteps
out that common door together, the one we shared
and then some charged and some just sauntered,
others marched or they meandered
down our separate paths, alone or paired.

And all the wonders of the unseen world,
or -- instead -- its sameness, its routine
that our separate lives would bring
marked us deep or marked us gentle
as travelers in time, if not in place
wrote its road-maps on each face
that sit together in this space.

If we would have wondered, if we could have known
where our separate roads would lead us
where our separate paths would leave us
would we have still walked so willing
through our shared, our common doorways,
fleeing from that time’s soft haze
into our own bright, breathless days
that came to mark our means and ways

Well, hindsight’s always perfect vision,
so for me I am still thankful
for those cheap, rose-colored glasses
handed out by fairy lasses
floating just outside our common door
the one through which we left together
that one last time, and nevermore.

Together now, those of us remaining
try to remember, wrapped in soft refraining
of our older, wiser, quieter laughter
what was so important then, what we valued
why we chose that one, or another
to wear the crowns that separated
those favored few from us
and from each other

Now, of course, the answer’s clear
But back then, our choices were so near
to our very young, our unformed views
of what was important, what had worth
what mattered as we strode the earth
that lay ahead, unknown,
outside that common door

Back then, we had few words and fewer crowns,
few worthy attributes than we now know
of what would soon come to really matter.
But today, we could bestow
many more glories, because we now know
what counts as worthy, what we’ve learned,
what’s clearer now than in the youthful haze
that we shared back in those days
when our worlds had not much yet turned.

I look around this crowd-less room,
at the faint, familiar faces – some so fine
of those few friends who have been steadfast
or the ones who slowly faded
or the friendships never made,
their small loss but (so much larger) mine
.
And I see more here to honor,
things we didn’t see before,
that this night, we might give homage
that has not yet been bestowed,
belated crowns to all among us
whose lives have since spun pure gold
from the flax that had been sowed,
that had always been growing just beyond
that long-closed common door.

So step up now or stand in place.
Just know that in your gray-framed face
I see more clearly now and I embrace
the worth that is in each one of us,
what we were given, what grew within us
from the flaxen seeds here sown
in our magnolia-scented world
the only world that we’ve all known.

Besides the ones we thought – back then –
to be most fair, most beautiful and handsome,
today I see ones we could have chosen
to be our most likely to stay well-preserved,
the ones whose soul-lights still burn bright within,
the cutest, the ones most likely still fun to cuddle
the ones most comfortable in their own skin.

Today, besides the ones we deemed most friendly
we could point to, we could choose
the ones most thankful, who are the calmest,
the kindest and the most serene
the sweetest and the most inclusive,
the ones least likely to have been mean.

Today, we could honor others besides the smartest,
we could choose the wisest, most well-rounded,
the best-read and the most open-minded,
the ones most blessed with eloquence
and the ones with the most receptive ear
the ones whose lives were most adventurous
and the ones who have remained
most satisfied with everything that had
always waited for them here.

In the same breath as the one most witty, we could choose
the least caustic, the most refined
the most sophisticated, the most demure
the worldliest, the ones most wealthy in friends and family
the ones whose lives were most filled with laughter,
the most cerebral, most secure.

Together with the ones most athletic, way back when and now,
we could add the ones most healthy, most happy
the ones most different, the least likely to ever change
the always fairest, the most forceful
the most electric, the most well-grounded
the bravest or, at least, the ones least likely to act fearful
the most cautious, the most careful ones,
the ones still most likely to leap before they look
yet also who still smile as they receive
an rueful earful from the rest of us
(the earth-bounded, the hard-working ones).

This list would continue, as it should
if we stayed here forever, if we only could
embrace the more complete knowledge
that we now share for what is real,
what has made -- what still makes --
each of us, nearer now the end,
so superlative, so good.

But, instead, we must remember
that, like everything, this time is fleeting,
that, in this long-awaited meeting,
time is surely slipping, silently, away.
It is not yet midnight, but it is
the evening of our life’s one day.

So we should embrace this moment
– this seamless and solitary night –
we who are now few, we who are still proud,
we who are more wrinkled and more gray,
we who were once and will be forever
the oh so mighty maroon and white
the ones who (long ago) walked together,
magnolia-marked, forevermore,
deeply formed by what we shared,
memories of our time together,
cherished and once so very cared for,
tucked silently and softly, safe inside
our lives’ last common door.